Short answers, pulled from the story.
Mark Cerny designed the PlayStation 5 with the primary goal of reducing loading times to eliminate pauses between gameplay moments. He spent two years consulting with developers to make input/output speed the central pillar of the console's architecture.
The PlayStation 5 uses a custom system-on-a-chip developed by AMD that integrates an eight-core CPU based on the Zen 2 architecture and a GPU built on the RDNA 2 architecture. This combination delivers a theoretical peak performance of 10.28 teraFLOPS and includes 825 gigabytes of built-in solid-state storage.
The DualSense wireless controller was revealed on the 7th of April 2020 and features adaptive triggers and haptic feedback using voice coil actuators. It also includes a built-in microphone array, a speaker for 3D audio, and a light bar moved to the sides of the touchpad.
The PlayStation 5 launched on the 12th of November 2020 in Australia, Japan, New Zealand, North America, and South Korea. The console achieved a record-breaking launch with 4.5 million units shipped by the end of 2020.
Sony released the 1100 series in August 2021 and the 1200-series in August 2022, followed by the PlayStation 5 Slim in November 2023. The PlayStation 5 Pro was released on the 7th of November 2024 with a GPU 45% faster than the standard model and 2 terabytes of internal SSD storage.
The PlayStation 5 is backward compatible with more than 99 percent of the PlayStation 4's 4,000-plus game library playable from launch day. As of the 16th of December 2021, six PlayStation 4 games remained incompatible with the PlayStation 5.